WELL, SINCE THE MEDIA WAS SAYING IT, I FIGURED IT WASN’T TRUE: The Rittenhouse-Trial Judge Isn’t a Trumpist.

Bruce Schroeder is in fact none of the things that his critics have proposed. Instead, he’s a liberal.

I use that word favorably. As the Washington Post notes in a recent profile, Schroeder is “a jurist who believes trials can be too easily manipulated, particularly by the prosecution.” Or, as Slate’s Jeremy Stahl puts it, Schroeder has a reputation for being “generally more favorable to defendants than many other judges.” Why has Schroeder conducted the trial in the way that he has? Because that is how he always conducts trials. It has nothing to do with some preposterous wish to help Rittenhouse, or with some secret desire to defend the Second Amendment, or with some longshot play to replace Tucker Carlson in the 9 p.m. hour. Schroeder is a liberal on matters of criminal justice, and this is how liberals on matters of criminal justice tend to judge. . . .

Two days ago, Hakeem Jeffries, a Democratic representative from New York, tweeted, “Lock up Kyle Rittenhouse and throw away the key.” Last year, he sang a different tune: “End. Mass. Incarceration. Defund The Prison Industrial Complex.” So which one is it? Are we ending “mass incarceration” and defunding the “prison industrial complex”? Or are we intervening mid-trial to recommend life sentence for suspects who are guaranteed the presumption of innocence by the very Constitution that Jeffries has sworn to uphold? Clearly, we can’t do both.

Remember all the elite chin-pulling concern about de-legitimizing our institutions? But the left does it whenever it doesn’t get its way, because they’re garbage people.